The Delphi Room (3 page)

Thick, yellow legal pad, purple gel pen. I read once that a lot of famous writers wrote on yellow legal pads and I thought about trying it, but I felt I needed something with an attractive cover. And the incongruity of it. Churning forth art on
legal
paper? Was I missing some profound irony? I liked gel pens, although I used them mostly for drawing flowers on jeans, or giving myself a charm bracelet tattoo around my ankle. (Should I have outgrown such practices?
Should
is a hateful word.) Writing required plain cheap pens, blue or black, Spartan Bics or Papermates. Though purple is my favourite colour.

For some time—the clock still read 8:57—I slumped in the chair, head on the desk. My skull bones throbbed. Miniature individual throbbing skulls sat in each of my knuckles, topped with a messy flower of peeled-back skin and drying blood. The right side of my body ached the worst, shoulder felt dislocated and relocated. Here’s a tip: when ragdolling yourself against a wall, remember to switch sides. I listened to the sound of my quivery breathing, face felt webbed tight with salt crystals. I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? The door wouldn’t open, the wall didn’t burst (I did) and no one—perhaps my friend Davie the atheist was right—appeared to hear me, or care. Somewhere in the vicinity of my heart faint bells of panic still rang for troops, but I was too exhausted to answer them with any more bright ideas. A horrible feeling of foolishness crept over me, and the flush of shame, so sure was I in the knowledge that I was the butt of an awful joke. A dupe. An easy mark. A laughingstock. So I sat up, queenly, hauling my spine out of my pelvis, smoothed my hair, licked my lips, squared my shoulders and picked up the purple gel pen. My shame-face deepened to the red of rage, and I uncapped the pen and put it to the yellow legal pad. I wrote these words:

I HATE YOU TOO

F
lat on my back, pain curlicueing in my right shoulder and arm, and down into my hip. I pulled up my dress and saw black bruises like plague welts. Bubonic bruises. Great. Flopped my head back onto the pillow, pointed and flexed my toes. I didn’t feel like moving, but at the same time the instinct of a caged animal was thrumming right beneath the surface of my skin, the same surge of frayed energy that ran through me in the hours, maybe days, before I hung up my belt. I swung my legs off the bed, touched my feet to the ground with a wince as though the soles had been whipped, one hand over the black orchids blooming on my hip. Hobbled to the mirror. Was startled to see that the right side of my mouth was swelling, and my cheekbone was covered with a red patch of puff. Don’t ask about the bob.

I turned away and looked at the writing desk and chair. There was something soothing and gorgeous about their shiny simplicity, the gleam of the chair’s white satin, black Roman-numeraled cushion. So I sat on it, since I couldn’t figure out what else to do. The message I’d written to God or Whoever-Was-Laughing-At-Me stared up in large purple script. I folded the page back and picked up the pen.

Hell, or maybe Purgatory (hopefully)

Somewhere, Nowhere

Still 8:57

Today I killed myself. Well, I don’t know what day it was, there’s no time in this place—the clock so far is stopped at 8:57. But I killed myself, that much is definite. I always believed in Life After Death, and right now I am sorry to have been proven right. I believed in God, too—well, I was pretty certain—but either I was wrong, or God is more vengeful than I anticipated. I feel lucid in this moment though, more so than I remember feeling in a long time—maybe the bashing-myself-on-the-wall histrionics freed my mind. Funny that technique never worked before I landed myself here. Torture for clarity? Made sense to the saints. But I’m hardly one of them. And the Shadowman’s still around—following his instructions was a pointless exercise. I don’t know what’s expected of me now. Maybe nothing. I can’t help thinking though—I’m afraid to think otherwise—that this must be a holding cell, a temporary way station.

I paused and looked up at the barred window with the white view. A new horror squirmed over my skin then, a sudden memory retrieved. Throat very tight, heart meeting stomach. No tears, but the hot hard pressure that precedes them, or lingers when there are no more left.
I’m sorry,
I said.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry
. I picked up my pen and wrote:

I miss my mother.

I
huddled in the sheets, pulled the eyelet over my head. Tried to squeeze my toes, which had gone cold, warm again. The armholes of my dress were soaked, sweat shivers trembled my shoulders. Queasiness made mashed potatoes in my stomach, and I sat up and tipped my head to the ceiling to perform the necessary ten don’t-vomit breaths. A picture of my mother sat fixed in my head like a star. The don’t-vomit breaths became gasps and then screams, my body a hooked fish. My hands moved down to my throat, finger-vise sealing off the air, until the stopped-up shriek became a shuddering moan.

Time irrelevant

This place is Hell, I’m fairly convinced of it. And the more I think about it, the more I know I deserve it. Those who create Hell for others deserve not escape, but more suffering, don’t they? And how ingenious: not fire and brimstone, but an Eternity with the Self and the Shadowman.

A light knock on the wall punctured the void and I dropped the pen. I sat rooted to the chair, not moving, not breathing. Again: this time three knocks. Not pounding: light, tentative, respectful knocking. If I expected anyone to visit me—I hoped—with directions, instructions, information, a welcome wagon or a red-hot poker, I expected they would use the door. (But why would they? Wake up, Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.) Hands on desk, I pushed myself from the chair, knees buckling once. The knocking had come from the wall just above the bed. I made it to the middle of the room before I stopped, arms crossed snug over my chest. Listened. Nothing but silence. I weighed my options, and faced with an Eternity of cudgelling loneliness, moved forward and climbed onto the bed. Clinging to one of the white bedposts, I waited some more, listening to my heart pump out warning. The air was dense, murky and hot. No more knocks. I leaned in and placed my fingertips on the wall, then leaned in further, grinding my ear into the pink. An auditory mirage? I drew back and curled my fingers into a fist and poised it, as if ready to fire. Knocked with the side of my hand, two, three. Then darted my fist into my other hand, ball into glove, eyes wide and burning.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—
I gripped the headboard—
four Mississippi
—fingers whitening—
five Mississippi
—cramp in my neck—
six Mississ
—
knock, knock, knock.
I unfroze, pulling my hands into my chest. The knocking was hard, a pepper of sound. My breathing sped to short chugs and I answered one two, three four, five six. Response: one two three, four five six, seven, eight—pause—nine. I pounded back a rhythm, then painted the wall with my hands looking for some unseen opening, a soft spot, a
Star Trek
portal. But in no place did my fingers melt through. The skin around my eyes stung from salt. The room was clamped in a silence that produced its own sound, a sucking—an aural leech. I banged out another pattern. And another. There was no answer. No pattern, no rhythm now: my hands covered the wall in a volley of slap-knocking. Nothing, nothing—nothing. I pulled my stinging, mashed-up hands away, puddled onto the eyelet.

Someone had knocked on my wall—I heard it. Or was I being driven crazy(er)? I stared at the ceiling. The bee-buzzing lightness of a fever-dream.

Possible escape routes, magic loopholes, chinks in the cosmic armour: nada, zip, dream on, outta luck, no way. I moved the bed, moved the desk, moved the mirror, pummelled the walls of the closet, whimpered at the door like a discarded puppy, attempted—without success—to rip up the carpet and briefly considered trying to hang myself from the doorknob. (Karmic double indemnity? Kill yourself twice—ride the soul train to Heaven? Oh, the sweet wishes of Hell. . . . ) I did discover, to my temporary ecstasy, a small metallic grate, like an air vent, on the wall near the floor, in the corner into which the bed was wedged, and made more bloody work of my hands trying to pry it free and reveal what I was convinced was going to be a highway to Heaven. Okay, so it wouldn’t budge. Plan B: shout into it, try to make alien contact. My screams must have deafened the Devil.

HELLLLPPPPP! HELLLLLLPPPP! ANYONE THERE? ANYONE HOME? ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF?

(Well, now they are, whoever
they
is.)

After wearing out my voice, attempting to dam my tears and snot, pulling out my eyelashes and then finally replacing all the furnishings—somehow it seemed necessary to keep the Pit of Doom neat and tidy—my nerves kept me pacing, as though if I walked fast enough, spun around in the blink of an eye, I could jump clear of my skin. Back and forth, wearing a fashion model groove in the carpet. Each time I turned from the closet, I startled at the fresh snapshot of myself in the mirror, botched-up fat-lipped cover girl. Out of my face’s collage of colours, my black eyes glittered like lonely coal pits. The wall was quiet. I used the hem of my dress to dab at the sweat under my arms. My neck felt giraffe-like, tall and swaying. The room alternated between stasis and sudden tilting, and I leaned against the slant, sometimes grasping a bedpost, trying to stay on my feet, to keep marching through the tipping ether.

A giant lurch and over she goes—I lay on my side breathing the faint lavender scent of the carpet, feeling my ribs tighten their cat’s cradle. I beamed wide unseeing eyes into the dimness beneath the dust-ruffled bed (I wanted a bed like this? Nothing is more embarrassing than the person you used to be) and rocked forward and back, forward and back. The room’s silence hummed like a minting factory for new souls.

And then I saw something.

White beyond the white of the dust ruffle, like a hand coming out of the twilight. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them. The flash of white remained, so I wiggled half-under the ruffle and stretched out my arm. I poked at the white with my index finger, prepared for heat or corrosive material.

It was a piece of paper.

I closed my hand around the cool crinkle and rolled out into the full light of the room. White legal paper, folded ever so neatly with sharp creases like a starched and ironed shirt. I chewed my peeling lips. I opened the paper.

To Whom It May Concern:

I heard you knocking and I was very excited. I am alone in this room. I would really like to know the answers to two questions. They are:

Who are you?

Why are you there?

Please write back. If you cannot, please knock three times. If you need paper, knock four times, and I will send you a piece. I do not think I can fit a pen through the grate, and anyway, I only have one.

Yours very truly,

Brinkley

I read the note three times. And then I read it three more. I read it until the letters started to float off the page and gymnastic into other letters.
Brinkley.
I sat propped up by the bed, one hand clinging to the ruffle, the other to the note. The room’s stillness framed my own. My lips tingled.

I was not alone.

I thought back to when I was first dumped at this Motel-6-in-the-Ether, (was God a plebeian? Certainly a philistine) to all of the identical tall, white doors with their identical large gold knobs. Was it possible that behind each and every one of them was another hapless sad sack without a clue? This was decidedly not a letter from God, or the Devil, or anyone who knew what was going on.
Brinkley.
I said the name several times aloud. I liked it. I turned the paper over again and again, even though I knew that the back was blank, just to make sure that there wasn’t any spontaneously appearing map and instructions on how to get the Hell out of here. (My own brand of optimism refused to die in full, and that, I concluded, was one of the Torturer’s screws. Hope is a cruel thing.)

“To Whom It May Concern.” To Whom It May Concern? Who opens a letter from Hell with that header? I studied the handwriting, made up my mind that Brinkley was a boy. Or rather, a man. The letters were plain, even blocky, though precise and neat.

“Who are you?” Well there’s a question for the ages.

Dear Brinkley,

I decked myself out and hung myself up. Too bad I ended up here, but good thing I was wearing a nice outfit and all my bills were paid on time. . . . 

No thanks. Though come to think of it, what did I care? The worst had happened, and what’s the point of trying to uphold your reputation in Hell? I turned my yellow legal pad to a fresh page, picked up my pen, and scrawled:

Dear Brinkley,

Receiving your letter was definite cause for celebration. I too am alone in my room. My name is Velvet. I lived in Vancouver, Canada. I committed suicide, and then I came here. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, maybe five minutes, maybe forever. The clock on my wall is stopped at 8:57—anyway, time seems irrelevant. This is definitely not Heaven, and until I got your letter I was convinced it’s Hell. Now I’m not so sure. I flirted with the idea of Purgatory, some kind of rest stop, but I certainly have not been restful and there is a decided lack of further instructions, hoops of fire to jump through, skill-testing questions to answer, etc. If you have any insights into this predicament, I would be grateful.

Now I ask the same two questions of you: who are you and why are you there?

Sincerely, Velvet

I pushed my letter through the grate and waited in the shade under the bed, lying on my side with my arms and legs drawn into me, as though in a carpeted womb. The bright lights of the rest of the room seemed sinister, marauding. And I was afraid that being exposed to them would somehow cause me to miss what I hoped was Brinkley’s forthcoming letter.

There was no dust under the bed. The lavender smell had an antiseptic edge. This womb was sterile.

I closed my eyes and listened for the rustle of paper. I had Brinkley’s letter clutched in my left hand, a reassurance that I hadn’t hallucinated a correspondence. Every few moments I would press it to my face, as though my hand was no longer feeling it, and I had to remind myself that it was there. I touched my tongue to it, too, and it tasted like real paper.

Venus flytrap, my hand snapped at the letter as it came through the grate. In my excitement, I rolled over, sat up and brained myself on the bed. Clutching my head, I poked it from the womb, into the bright lights of Hell, and started to read.

Dear Velvet,

I was likewise overjoyed to receive your letter. Velvet is a pretty name. Were you named after someone, or were your parents trying to be original? My mother was a painter, and I suffered for her love of originality. When I was growing up, the kids at school called me Wrinkly.

I am very sorry to learn of the circumstances that brought you here. I am not as clear on why I find myself in this room. Truth be told, the last thing I remember is running along a street on my way to work. I was starting a new job, and I was afraid I was going to be late. I darted off a curb headed for my usual café and my soy latte (I am allergic to cow’s milk) when suddenly I found myself whizzing down a slide in the dark, and eventually wound up here. Having had considerable opportunity to reflect, I have decided that in all likelihood a car ran me over. I remember that two nights before my ill-fated excursion, I had a dream that I was hit by a speeding yellow Volkswagen Beetle on my way to work. I woke up sweaty, like I had been running a marathon in my sleep (I am not a very athletic person), and with the definite feeling that I should not leave the house. I still felt that way the following morning and I thought about calling in sick, but it was the first day of my new job, and so I really was not able to, and I pushed whatever misgivings I had out of my mind. Gee whiz, whoever said, “always trust your instincts” was not kidding. I have learned that the hard way.

Who am I? That is a difficult question to answer, is it not? I lived in Toronto. I worked at a bank. I guess you could say I am a numbers guy.

I apologize for the fact that I can provide no more answers than you. I, too, have no idea how long I have been here—the clock on my wall is stopped at 8:56. I was growing sure that this indeed is Hell—or a Hell of sorts, there’s no denying that—and I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out what I did to deserve this. I suppose there might be a few things.